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Comment: The EU and the ‘new 21st century colonialism’

Responding to public and media pressure brought on by the so-called Panama and Paradise papers exposés, the European Union has been compiling, tweaking and talking for months about its “blacklist” of “non-compliant” jurisdictions. On 5 December, it published a working list of some 17 jurisdictions, which by 13 March, amid much public discussion and media comment, it had reduced to a final nine (while stressing that this list would be updated at least once a year, if not more often if necessary).

Last week, the UK Parliament’s Treasury Sub-Committee announced a “Tax Avoidance and Evasion inquiry” into “what progress has been made in reducing the amount of tax lost to avoidance and offshore evasion”, even as the Labour MP who chairs the Sub-Committee shared his apparently deeply-held views